Sicily is both famous and notorious. The splendour of its past is recognised worldwide: Greeks, Byzantines, Fatimids, Normans and on and on. If you flip the coin you have mafia, corruptions, omertà (code of silence). The story of the Council of Egypt combines in part these two aspects of the island. The historical and artistic legacy…
Category: opinions and thoughts
#IslamicForgeries – Intro | Why are they fascinating?
Forgeries are bad. They are fake reproductions of an original object, made on purpose, to fool people. Museums, collectors and scholars feel sort of ashamed when they realise they have displayed, bought or studied a forgery they believed authentic.
Islamic Art & Art Market: how Fall 2015 auctions went
Exactly one month ago the Islamic Art Week started in London, with the traditional auctions at Bonhams (Oct 6th), Sotheby’s (Oct 7th) and Christie’s (Oct 8th and 9th). Coming from a strictly academic background, I have never been much interested in the auction world as a whole but as I have already said and repeat…
Hijazi script, carbon dating and Qur’anic manuscripts – a response to Italian news
In these days newspapers and online communities started to take into consideration early Qur’anic manuscripts. This is thanks to Dr. Alba Fedeli, who discovered one of the earliest known copies of the Qur’an. Being a former student of Professor Alba Fedeli, and having written my bachelor thesis on the Sanaa manuscripts, under her supervision I…
Treasures from al-Andalus – the type designer’s perspective on Arabic calligraphy
Art can be read, and studied, from different perspectives and with different purposes. Arabic calligraphy is no exception to the rule. Such is the case of Therry Fétiveau and his Batutah typeface. His experience as a graphic and type designer literally opened a brave new world in front of my eyes: a world in which…
ISIS black flag – an iconographical reading
ISIS and their black flags is well known. Documentaries have been shot and articles have been written. Yet, the flag in itself sometimes remains unexplained. It is black, with some Arabic words on it, and a white circle with inside, again, some other words. It is their sign, and their marks. It is quite simple in…
Tughra, the unbearable beauty of a signature… and its customization
Just say ‘Islamic calligraphy’ or google it, sooner or later (most probably sooner), a tughra will appear. I admit I never took tughras in much consideration when studying Islamic art: to me they were simply signatures of the sultans, surely useful to date letters, inscriptions and objects. But nothing more. Then I’ve starting facing the Islamic…
Islamic Art in Indonesia – a neglected and problematic heritage
On Wednesday, 28th January 2015, I had the chance to take part to a beautiful and interesting research convention wonderfully organised by ACMES (Amsterdam Centre for Middle Eastern Studies). During the panel entitled “Collecting Islam in Europe”, I was particularly impressed by the presentation of Mirjam Shatanawi (National Museum for World Cultures, Leiden) about Indonesian Islamic Art.
The representation of the Orient and women on Twitter: #DonnedOriente
Orientalism is something that I really love. Or better, I love to study and understand the Orientalist perspective that sometimes, even today, is still present. And it is. Just have a look at Twitter, and you will find a lot, really a lot of pictures of Orientalist paintings, that represent a certain image of the…
Artistic relations between East and West: Italian renaissance painters
It has been some time now that I am more and more interested in artistic influences between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. As always, nothing new under the sun: I am not the first one. Anna Contadini, in her beautiful article ‘Sharing a Taste? Material Culture and Intellectual Curiosity around the Mediterranean, from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth…
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